


Out Of Silk Trappings

by Merixcil



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Coming Out, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Grief/Mourning, Self-Discovery, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 11:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11126202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Despite Alfred's insistence, Bruce is very sure the things he feels are not normal for a boy his age





	Out Of Silk Trappings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains descriptions of gender dysphoria. For much of the fic, the trans character in question doesn't realise that they are trans and is referred to by their birth assigned gender and pronouns

Selina ducks through the window, and for a moment the shadows hide her silhouette so thoroughly that Bruce can persuade himself he doesn’t know who she is. For someone so prickly, there’s very little that’s sharp about her figure. Smooth lines and plump cheeks, her hips just beginning to flare and the low rise of her breasts are visible beneath myriad layers of jumpers and tshirts.

It’s normal for Bruce to notice these things, or so Alfred says. He’s _at an age_. It doesn’t stop his skin from crawling when he comes back to himself. Selina doesn’t seem to mind, but he feels awful for boiling her down to her physicality like that without permission.

“Good evening, Selina.” Bruce says, setting aside the book on eighteenth century British gun law he’s been wading through for the past two days.

She doesn’t flinch, but her mouth draws in to a disappointed line when she realises she’s been spotted. Bruce isn’t nearly vain enough to take it personally, Selina would simply rather come and go as she pleases. Some mornings he comes into his father’s study and finds the cushions on the sofas ruffled and the latch on the window not quite slid back into place.

He’s told her at least a dozen times that if she wants a bed, all she has to do is ask. Selina inevitably rebuffs him with a comment about rich boys taking in waifs and strays. Bitter, longing. He knows she wants to say yes but he can’t force her to bridge the gap that will shift her tongue.

“’Sup,” Selina replies.

“I’m well,” Bruce allows himself a small smile. It had taken him months to understand the sort of response that ‘’sup’ was supposed to provoke. He can’t bring himself to respond in kind - his mother wouldn’t approve of him using slang - but he can at least demonstrate that he understands.

Selina nods, her curls bouncing under her hood. Sometimes Bruce stands in front of the mirror, fresh out of the shower, and folds his hair in on itself in the hope that it will stay that way when it dries.

It never does, and Alfred arranges haircuts like clockwork, an afterthought in the running of the house. It never occurs to Bruce to ask him not to.

“Mind if I crash?” Selina asks, already kicking off her boots and curling up on the sofa.

“Of course not. If you like, I can ask Alfred to prepare you a bed.”

Selina snorts, “I’m good kid. Thanks.” She shucks off her goggles and starts wrestling with her hoodie. As she pulls it up the shirts underneath cling to it, exposing the soft skin of her belly.

Alfred often tells Bruce that when his training is done, he won’t have an ounce of flab on him. The thought of a body made of hard lines and we’ll defined muscles sounds alien to Bruce. He sucks in a breath and ducks his head, averting his eyes. Blood pounds in his ears and all he can think about is how soft Selina looks, how delicate. He doesn’t understand how she can be so tough when she looks like that.

Grabbing his book, and a stack of old stock reports from Wayne Enterprises, Bruce heads for the door. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t steal anything,” he says, without looking round.

He can practically hear Selina’s smirk, “no promises.”

 

 

 

Not everyone at school is unpleasant in their own right, but Bruce has spent enough time on the receiving end of insults targeting his appearance and social skills to be wary of new targets. He appreciates the need to socialise with people his own age, and to a lesser degree he understands the value of learning to blend in with people you have nothing in common with. He still dislikes Gotham Academy immensely, and wishes that he had been able to continue his education independently.

Thanks to his class mates, Bruce knows that he is skinny, that he talks too formally, that his ears stick out, that he’s a goodie-two-shoes, that he doesn’t use enough product in his hair to achieve a fashionable style. None of this information is new to him, and on its own it’s innocuous, but the way they say it makes it sound like it all amounts to some awful personal failing.

The boys at school wear their shirt collars upturned and their trousers low enough to demonstrate their garish underwear. Their hair always stands at odd angles and they let their rucksacks sit low on their backs. Bruce watches them out of the corner of his eye, and his skin doesn’t crawl. Instead he feels a low level of dread, that one day the rest of the world will turn around and expect him to follow their example. He doesn’t mind if they want to tease him and try to rile him up for a fight, but he doesn’t want to _be_ them.

They joke in the bathrooms about everything from fart jokes to sex. It makes Bruce feel sick, the way they talk about the things they hope to one day do with girls. He can’t imagine ever being interested in any of that. But Alfred says it’s normal for boys of their age so he doesn’t ask.

“Oi Wayne, why’d you dress like a girl?” One of them asks, fresh after lunch.

Bruce doesn’t have a clue what he's talking about, but that doesn’t stop a whole group of boys converging on him, pushing him back towards the entrance of the girls’ bathroom, till he has nowhere to go but in.

They cackle and high five each other, watching Bruce standing gormless in the doorway. It’s not that he couldn’t take them in a fight if he tried, but it seems like an awfully silly thing to get so worked up about. Girls shuffle past, in and out. They’re never nearly so nasty as the boys, and Bruce longs to be able to call on them for aid and friendship without prompting fits of giggles.

They're right at the age when everyone starts to mix, select couples vanishing behind bike sheds to hold hands and kiss. Sometimes Bruce thinks about kissing Selina, beyond the bare brush of lips that she had gifted him with in the window of his father’s study. He imagines what it would be like to hold her under his hands, tracing the lines of her body, slipping fingers into the curls of her hair.

But Selina is far away across town. He’d like to cover the cost of her tuition at Gotham Academy, just to see how thoroughly she’d shake up the school, but he knows she'd never take him up on the offer.

Eventually the boys get tired, and skulk away to their next classes. Bruce is left standing in the doorway of a bathroom, knowing that he does not have permission to take a step further.

He wishes that they’d pushed him deeper inside. He wishes he was standing in the middle of a tiled floor, with cubicles behind him and not a urinal in sight. He shivers in revulsion, and he doesn’t care if it’s normal for a boy of his age because he doesn’t want to think like that. Bruce breaks into a run as soon as he’s out of the building, thinking that Alfred won’t mind so much if he’s home a little early.

 

 

 

“You met a nice girl yet?” Alfred asks, part genuine curiosity, part distraction technique.

Bruce is used to Alfred trying to distract him, and dodges the left hook thrown his way like an afterthought. “I have met many nice young women, all told. You’ve been introduced to quite a few of them.”

Being deliberately facetious is, Bruce has discovered, a crucial element of his sense of humour. No one else seems to find it particularly funny, but he revels in the split second in which the world thinks he’s being serious.

Getting a kick out of it - is how Selina describes it. A _kick_ out of it. Slang to be sure. Bruce has memories of his mother’s eyes dancing despite the seriousness in her voice. The long moment it would take for his father to laugh. He thinks he’d quite like to be like his mother.

Alfred is dogged as ever when it comes to his chosen topic of conversation. He needles, he teases, he brings up names of classmates Bruce has mentioned in passing and brandished them like weapons.

Delilah, Wendy, Madison, Eleanor. Bruce denies any attachment to them, in any form. He doesn’t think about bathroom mirrors and thresholds that will forever remain uncrossed.

“Aren’t they pretty?” Alfred grins as his fist lands firm in the centre of Bruce’s chest, winning him the round.

The blow leaves Bruce winded. “I suppose,” he heaves around his constricting diaphragm.

It’s not a lie. Bruce can see clear as day that his female classmates are, by and large, uncommonly beautiful young women. He doesn’t think he sees it in the way Alfred expects him to though. A pretty face is neither here nor there to Bruce, but what distracts him are the soft lines of bodies that are not expected to be tough, the sweep of an eyelash darkened by mascara.

“I knew it!” Alfred crows, offering Bruce a hand to help him get back up, “there’s no shame in it lad. It’s normal for a boy your age.”

The boys in Bruce’s class shut him out, and he doesn’t have any male friends outside of school. He doesn’t think there’s anything particularly normal about him at all.

 

 

 

Gotham City is a mystery to Bruce. Or rather, it is one truth and a whole lot of mysteries. Dark corners and well-worn secrets that he has been shielded from for so long that they hit him like complete surprises.

Sometimes Selina takes him out to experience the wonders of this concrete jungle first hand. Bruce has learned to see the invitation coming a mile off, in the almost concealed tear tracks on her cheeks.

Bruce has asked Selina Kyle what makes her so sad on exactly three occasions, and has had to explain three sprained wrists to Alfred.

“C'mon,” Selina nods towards the window impatiently. She never exactly asks, but it’s usually a safe assumption that Bruce will want to join. He loves finding out just how big his city really is, and he can usually justify keeping up with Selina as a training exercise.

It’s not uncommon for her to run so fast as to leave Bruce behind, which invariably means she’s insufferable the next time she pops through the window. Her taunting is only made worse by the shared unspoken knowledge that Bruce is years off being able to keep up with her.

When she moves at his pace though, oh how the city sings for her. There are secluded pockets of street children and homeless adults scattered all across Gotham, setting up support networks, caring for each other. Bruce listens for the names of the missing and takes them back to Jim Gordon.

The detective never has an answer. It seems the GCPD are at best minimally concerned with the lives of waifs and strays.

“They don’t care about us,” Selina’s voice is bitter laughter.

Bruce doesn’t know what to say to that anymore. He used to have so much faith that the authorities cared. The world no longer looks so black and white.

The Gotham Underground is so much more than the missing and the forgotten though. If all you are is a name absent from the register, how is anyone supposed to care that you are gone? These people are family to each other, in a world where everything else fails.

Ivy, Bruce has met before. She creeps Selina out, but Bruce likes how slow she goes. Careful words, picked to be sure that no one expects too much of her.

“People should care,” She hums.

“Yes.” Bruce replies. And that’s enough conversation for an afternoon.

It seems that every person Selina might have called a parent has moved on, or had something unspeakable happen to them. Bruce watches her shoot down queries as to the well being of this or that person from her past with fierce eyes trying hard not to cry. He wonders if he could think up another excuse for a sprained wrist.

“Very nice to meet you,” Bruce says, whenever he is introduced to anyone.  He holds out his hand, notes the way that these people are bemused by him where his classmates only ever deride.

“Please to meet you too,” Jo laughs. She’s a few years older than him, all soft lines, a wide smile. Something aches in Bruce, it feels abnormal and too large to grasp. She also speaks just a little too properly, and though her clothes are filthy in the same way as any other homeless teen, they look well made.

“What happened to you?” Bruce asks when Selina’s back is turned.

Jo shrugs, “Isn’t it obvious?”

It’s not. It’s really not. Bruce can feel his fingers fumbling for the seam on this can of worms. “You don’t look like most girls who end up on the street.”

He knows he’s said the wrong thing as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Jo’s eyes flash hurt, confusion, the familiar feeling of the universe letting you down. “I’m not a girl.”

“Oh.”

But Jo has soft lines, the clear shape of breasts lying low against his ribs. He insists he is a he, with practiced ease.

“But…What makes you a man?” Bruce can’t stop staring, can’t stop trying to bite down on the raging uncontrollable _something_ trying to punch a hole in his chest.

No one else seems to struggle, pronouns are easy for them. “Because I am.”

The universe might be trying to tear itself apart in a fundamental way. Or it might be finally falling in to place. Bruce goes home alone that night, leaving Selina in his wake for the very first time.

 

 

 

The old master bedroom in Wayne manor remains untouched for the most part. In the weeks following his parents passing, Bruce asked that Alfred leave it lie and neither of them have brought it up since. The thin light of a winter midmorning struggles to fit itself through the crack left in the curtains, illuminating a column of dust mites dancing in the air.

The room smells old and musty, the beginnings of damp rot forming in the corners. It’s in desperate need of care and attention, or simply human life to reinvigorate it. The door falls open easily under his hands, and Bruce is shocked at how little it feels like his parents’ bedroom any more. It is a holding cell for the ghosts of years past, and if he doesn’t let it be anything more that is all it will ever be.

Today isn’t about reviving the dead parts of this house though, today is about discovering the lay of the land. A voyage into the unknown, and whatever lies on those untapped shores.

As such, Bruce doesn’t turn on the light when he slips across the threshold, nor does he open the curtains. He closes the door as softly as he can and prays that whatever business Alfred has in the grounds will keep him occupied for the next few hours. Bruce has long since learned to move silently in the manor, but he is unfamiliar with the way the floorboards groan under his weight in here.

The bed is made just as Alfred had left it that morning three years ago, perfume bottles and jewellery scattered over the dresser from where his mother decided to dress up to go to the movies. Just a bit of fun. A pause hanging in the air before his father had gotten the joke and decided to join in. The wardrobe doors hang open, displaying suits in uniform blues and blacks and dresses in colours muted by the half-light. Bruce runs his hand across the fabrics and feel dust displace, making him sneeze.

He pulls down his sleeves and picks cufflinks off the bedside table, trying them on for size. There is an old medical journal tucked under the lamp, waiting for someone to come along and pick up where they had left off. Bruce rifles through the pages but is unable to tell where his father had stopped reading, sets the thing down with shaking breath and shaking hands.

He half expects bats to untangle themselves from the velvet when he disturbs the hangings of the old four poster bed. He flinches against it, the cold dread of dark wings beating about his head. A beast that can see him better than he can see it. There will be pests of all sorts to be dealt with, when Bruce finally works out what to do with the memory of his parents.

No bats though, not here. Bruce steps away from the bed, still wearing his father’s cufflinks but unsure if he should be. He turns towards the dresser, watches his reflection, washed out and insubstantial in the diminished light.

Bruce looks down at the spread before him and doesn’t know where to start. His mother had been a vivacious and intelligent person, but she had never been particularly tidy. He can make out the faint scent of her old perfume drifting up from amid the dust and the years. His hands don’t shake when he reaches for the bottle, bringing it to his nose and breathing deep.

Three sprays, one behind each ear and one for his wrists, pressed against each other quickly to distribute the fragrance. And after that it’s all too much, and Bruce doesn’t even hear the floor creaking beneath his feet as he makes for the door.

Alfred returns half an hour later, by which time Bruce has removed the cufflinks and thrown them into the bottom of his chest of draws in his room, rolled his sleeves back up like nothing ever happened.

The perfume is less easily shaken, and when he stops to think about it, Bruce comes to realise that he doesn’t really want to. There’s a moment when Alfred comes a little too close, and his eyes cloud over.

Seeing ghosts.

“Master Bruce…” He starts. Voice cracking at the very end of his train of thought.

Bruce takes his hand and sits him at the end of the dinner table. He makes them both tea, and the kitchen smells a little like Martha Wayne has returned to the land of the living for one shamefully short winter afternoon.

 

 

 

Any clothes he has given Selina over the years are to be considered as gifts in Bruce’s mind. She sees them as favours he’ll collect on when the time is right, still too skittish to entertain the possibility that he really cares.

“I don’t want them!” She groans, pushing skirts and dresses and high heels worn only a handful of times into his arms. Her eyes linger a second too long on the trailing silk of a black blouse that she had spent months eyeing up in the window of a high street shop in the city centre. To Bruce it had seemed obvious, to buy her something she so clearly wanted when she couldn’t buy it for herself.

But Selina straightens herself out, stands tall, like she’s trying to harden all her soft lines.

Bruce blinks down at the mass of fabric, unsure of what happens next but unable to swallow the excitement clawing up his throat. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure,” Selina lies through her teeth.

Bruce is sure that if he were to leave them on the floor of his father’s study, they would be whisked away over a matter of months. She thinks that if she steals something, she’s earned it. But she can’t stand charity.

They are standing in his bedroom, Selina having been tempted into the inner sanctum with promises that no one but Bruce will see her standing there. If Alfred finds out… _when_ Alfred finds out…he’s going to remark on how normal this is for a boy of Bruce’s age, to want a pretty girl in his bedroom. His mouth will twitch into a knowing little smile and his eyebrows will raise.

Bruce will feel abnormal and Alfred will read his discomfort as him bring bashful.

“What am I supposed to do with them?” He asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“Burn them. Sell them. Give them away,” Selina throws out her hands, the suggestion of limitless possibilities, “wear them for all I care.”

Bruce wants to choke, to scream. To push Selina out into the wider world and let him deal with the notion that these items really could be his after all. He stares at her in wonder, unable to see how it all fits together so easily for her.

She sees him looking, and the disagreeable, unfriendly note she tries so hard to hold on her tongue softens a little. “Here.”

Selina takes the clothes from Bruce’s arms and starts spreading them out on his bed. Bruce’s hands cannot stay steady like he wants them to, and he rips buttons off his shirt in his haste to get it up and over his head. He peels back layers, till he’s left standing in the middle of the room in nothing but his boxers, shucking his shoulders forward in an attempt to disguise the bony edges of his body. He is all hard lines and it is so very unfair, because the clothes on the bed were cut for people who are soft and curved. People who were born into this.

“It’s ok,” Selina soothes, bringing up a hand to steady his shaking shoulders. She pulls a dark blue dress from the pile, something simple and without ostentation. It pinches slightly where it expects a pair of hips to go and Bruce doesn’t know if this is going to work, if this is going to fit.

There’s a zip and a built in slip and it’s touch and go as to whether he’s going to find the courage to go through with this. He hates how hard it feels, something as simple as an item of clothing that he’s never had cause to try on before.

Selina goes low, pulls bits if fabric out from where they’ve gotten trapped in themselves. If her voice is gentle it is the only soft thing about her in this moment. She moves him sharply into position, spinning him to get at the zip.

“Good thing you’re so skinny, kid. You’ll slip right into this. You’re gonna need something longer eventually though.”

Bruce stiffens. _Eventually_ is such a loose concept, and not one he’s ready to deal with. He’s not even sure he’s ready for this much and Selina is talking about all the places he’ll go.

She has the good graces to shuffle her feet, fiddle with the shirt arms of the dress. Embarrassed. “I mean, if you want to.”

The zip comes up, Selina looks at him hard for a moment before diving pack into the clothes littering the bed and coming up with a hairpin in a blue almost identical to the dress. She knocks his hair out of its carefully gelled side parting and sweeps his fringe out of his eyes with it.

Then comes the mirror, pulled out of nowhere, “What do you think?”

His arms are too long and stringy, his knees to knobbly, his jawline too hard. Bruce doesn’t think he will ever look soft, but the swooping lines of the dress iron out the jagged lines of his hips and like this his hair looks more naturally free.

It’s not perfect, it’s no more than a toe dipping in a wide open ocean. But the temperature feels alright to him

“Thank you,” Bruce gasps, pulling Selina into a hug.

She returns it awkwardly, arm coming round to pat him on the back like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. “Any time, Bruce.”

 

 

 

“Alfred, do you think a person defines who they are? Or is how we are perceived dictated entirely by the whims of others?”

Alfred blinks at Bruce across the dinner table, “feeling philosophical this evening, are we?”

“It’s just…” Bruce stops but doesn’t stutter. This isn’t _just_ anything, it’s so much more complicated. “Lately I feel like the person I am inside is not the person everyone else sees.”

“That could very well be because you rarely seem to leave this house. You can hardly blame people for not getting to know you when you won’t get to know them,”

With a shake of the head, Bruce continues, “It’s bigger than that.”

There is a moment where the air turns icy, and Alfred adopts the expression of a man who has been lied to by omission. It leaves Bruce wondering if apologies are in order, if it’s even possible to apologise for something you didn’t realise was happening to you.

Alfred dips his head and clears his throat, “I understand that as a teenager you are going through a period of your life in which you are coming to understand various aspects of yourself and if you have felt unable to talk to me about them up till now I’m very sorry.”

His voice sounds tight, caught between sincerity and betrayal. Bruce doesn’t know whether to feel compassion for the former or anger for the latter.

“It’s not like that, Alfred. Honestly, I’ve only been sure of it myself for a few days.”

“Sure of what, exactly? Do you have hair growing in places it shouldn’t? Have you taken up smoking? Are your friends trying to get you into drugs?” Alfred draws a deep breath, pausing his babble, “you know it’s perfectly normal for a boy your age to be interested in other boys.”

Deep breaths don’t smooth out any hard lines, but they calm minds. “What about for a girl of my age?”

After all the build-up, the months, years, God knows how long of looking in the mirror and not seeing what was expected. It’s absolutely ludicrous that this next step should be so easy.

And yet it’s easy. A beat, in which the world falls away till it’s just the two of them and Alfred pulls apart words to decipher meaning.

“Yes. Perfectly normal.”

Bruce nods and turns her attention back to her dinner. She can feel Alfred’s eyes on her, warm and relieved, and she thinks that if this could be so simple, she has little to worry her on the path ahead

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love. Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)


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